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Purpose of Position Records, edits and publishes video content associated with official UT System meetings and events. Position will work closely with other colleagues in the Office of External Relations as part of a creative team charged with communicating key messages with internal and external constituents across a spectrum of media.

Essential Functions Records material for production using video, camera and audio equipment for on and off-site location shoots. Makes technical decisions for video projects including recording equipment, lighting, composition, and audio. Assists in editing and assembling final visual/audio program material. Ensures consistency and relevancy to production in achieving respective goals. Monitors technical quality of end products and identifies areas of improvement for technology and processes. Assists members of the creative team within the Office of External Relations regarding concepts and physical realities of production setting. Executes assignment based projects with specific instructions. Maintains and operates video equipment, stays up-to-date with all new technological advances. Tests all equipment to determine technical quality of recording, audio and lighting apparatus prior to operation in the field. Oversees the security, operation and maintenance of equipment utilized in shooting and editing. Reports to the Senior Web Designer and works collaboratively with other creative team members within the Office of External Relations

Do you know what your legal rights are as a photographer? What about your responsibilities as a professional and any potential liabilities that may result from your actions? Do you wonder what that “indemnity clause” means in the contract you’re about to sign? Confused about why you should register your copyrights? In these days of ever changing digital technology, complicated contracts, work for hire, decreased budgets and even the fear of terrorism, knowing our legal rights and how they effect us and our businesses can be as important to our success as the ability to make great pictures.

“A federal appellate court has thrown out a class action settlement between freelance writers and online publishers and databases that archived the writers’ work without pay, saying that the pact approved by the lower court did not represent the interests of all class members,” reports The National Law Journal. The settlement doesn’t properly compensate freelance writers who never registered the copyright to their work, the judge says. That group makes up 99 percent of the class action. Disclosure: One of the companies the freelance writers are suing is ALM, the parent company of my employer, Texas Lawyer.

Writing for the New York Law Journal, two lawyer columnists trace out court opinions that have examined who should get protection under journalism shield laws. What is the definition of a “journalist” under the laws?

Arguing function over form, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has stated: “what makes journalism journalism is not its format but its content” and “the critical question for deciding whether a person may invoke the journalist’s privilege is whether she is gathering news for dissemination to the public.”

A freelance news photographer was arrested Friday and charged with obstruction after he was ordered to stop videotaping police. An officer told the photographer, Phil Datz, to “go away,” after which he moved down the street and resumed taping. Despite being a credentialed member of the press and standing in a public area around other people, he was arrested and charged with obstruction of governmental administration.

As part of my recent Q&A with Wichita Eagle courts reporter Ron Sylvester, I asked him to point out legal-news videos he’s produced that make him especially proud. Ron highlighted several videos, and I decided to make a separate post because I think if folks really take time so study these examples, they’ll come away with inspiration and ideas they can use in their own reporting. Here are Ron’s answers, edited for style (I also added the frame grabs).

News Videographer: Please choose an example of one of your legal-news videos that you’re very proud of. Why?

Ron Sylvester: I like this one because it shows how laws have unintentional consequences and how those effect real people. The judge was so direct in his criticism of the law and explaining how it effected this young women, I thought it was a pretty good illustration.

Video by Ron Sylvester

You can’t take cameras into federal court but when Judge Wesley Brown agreed to be interviewed on camera, it was a great opportunity. Brown was 103 at the time (he’s still hearing cases now at 104). The three-part series shows how you can use stills to break up an interview. This series also generated more views than all the videos on our news organizations web site the previous year.

Video by Ron Sylvester

One of the things I got to do from this court series was follow a couple of court deputies during their duties. As reporters, we don’t often get to record an arrest first hand. This time, I got to do that. A video outside the courtroom.

Video by Ron Sylvester

Here’s a multimedia package I put together on a 30-year-old murder case that was called into question by Kansas law students. It brought up concerns about Kansas laws designed to protect the innocent and police handling of evidence in old cases. It also presented a challenge. The subject of this was in prison, and they wouldn’t allow cameras. There are two videos with interviews of Ronnie Rhodes, done by telephone from prison, which I made into videos, having to use some creativity to get it done. I also thought a lot about adding to what I presented in the written stories and using the videos to provide more information and more depth to the entire package.

As a reporter covering courts and the legal profession full time for the first time in my career, I’ve struggled with making compelling video stories. Many of the articles I write are complicated and factual, and they don’t immediately lend themselves to video. To get inspiration and some ammo to try to step up my game, I emailed Ron Sylvester of The Wichita Eagle in Kansas. Ron has been covering courts for a good long while, and he has self-taught himself video and how to use the medium to cover the courts in a compelling way. Here are Ron’s answers, edited for style.

News Videographer: What have you observed are the primary challenges of covering legal news using video?

Ron Sylvester: Court tends to be static. It’s a lot of talking heads. But the content is great. I always say courts present the height of human drama on many levels. It’s why they’ve made so many TV dramas out of courts. Of course, those are embellished. The challenge, especially for the web, is to highlight how legal issues effect individuals and tell the story through them. And be creative with your b-roll. Audio is also a big issue. If you look at the “Common Law” series you’ll find a variety of audio qualities. That was me experimenting. Even local television folks, who have done this for years, complain about audio in the courtrooms. During a trial I covered which made the national news, I asked the audio engineer for TruTV (formerly Court TV) how he got such good sound. He said he had more than a dozen microphones in the courtroom. It lowered my expectations of what I could do significantly.

NV: What sorts of legal news do you suggest covering with video?

Ron: I think criminal courts are the most compelling. I’ve always said I could walk into any random court hearing and come out with a story. I put that to the test in my blog series “Common Law.” It turned out to be true. The goal was to cover the daily events of the court, not just the big trials that make the news. I think we still came out with interesting stories.

NV: How do you go about making your legal-news videos compelling visually?

Ron: I’ve done this by trying to catch the moments when the lawyers or judge are making their most compelling statements. I shoot from a mid-range shot all the time. I create closeups in editing, zooming in on the frames. I’ve found I get good quality on the mid-range shots, so that you don’t lose the picture when you blow it up. Because you can’t predict when those moments will come. Because I only have one camera, I have also made it my rule that I will only use B-roll from the same hearing. I don’t use stock footage of a judge, for example. When I have a judge listening to what a lawyer is saying, it may not be from that moment, but it is from a moment close in time. I’ve also used headlines from newspaper stories and other types of photos. We’ve used stills from our archive (for example if we have photos from an earlier crime), maps and crime scene photos to break up the talking heads. In the interview with a 103-year-old federal judge, we also used photos from his past.

NV: What other advice would you give legal reporters who want to make rocking videos?

Ron:

Gain an understanding of the legal process before you take a camera in. If you know how hearings work, know what to expect beforehand, you’ll be more prepared with what to watch for, where to put your mics and where to aim the camera at different points. You’ll also know when it’s safe to catch b-roll.

Always be respectful of the court proceedings. Don’t make noise. Dress appropriately for court (at least business casual). Be as unobtrusive as possible.

Get there early and set up. Don’t be rattling around with equipment as the judge is walking into the courtroom.

Of course, always talk to the judge beforehand. In most districts, you need the judge’s permission but have a good working relationship with them will go a long ways.

Even during times when one person is talking, I try to switch up the shots, going from the judge, to the defendant, back to the judge, using tight, medium, wide shots. This is all basic stuff, but switching them up will make the video more interesting, even if it’s the same person talking through out.

Lawyers and judges have to over explain things. They have to make a complete record. Don’t be afraid to edit a 5-minute argument to two sentences, just as you would do with a print story. It will get the point across and keep the video moving. The audience depends on you to be a filter. That’s part of the journalistic responsibility. That said, make sure you don’t over simplify it. I always check with the parties after the video is posted to get feedback on how accurately I edited an hour’s hearing to two minutes. So far, I’ve gotten good responses.

Be patient. Editing an hour-long hearing to two minutes isn’t easy, when you’re having to run the camera, monitor audio and edit. I always say doing one of these videos was the equivalent of writing a good text story or news article on a court hearing. That will usually take me a whole day. These aren’t the kinds of videos you can whip out in an hour. At least, I can’t. If you can, please tell me how.

I produced several videos at work recently when I covered the State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting in San Antonio. I wrote an article for the paper about a major theme at the meeting: lawyers using social media and technology in their law practices. Embedded within the article are two videos–One is a man-on-the-street piece where I asked lawyers how they use social media; the other is a video about the Texas Bar leadership changing out. You can see the Q&A video is basic talking head video; no visuals there, except I was happy to have an eye-pleasing background where I conducted the interviews. The Bar leadership video is a bit more visual since the change-out happened during a luncheon and there was a little bit of pomp and ceremony to show. I did the best I could with what was there.

The National Law Journal reports people in France are “outraged” at seeing photos of former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn handcuffed, being led away by police in a perp walk. In France, “the press is prohibited from publishing photos of defendants in handcuffs unless the person is convicted,” the story says.

I’ve shot stories of perp walks, and they feel downright icky. It feels wrong. And when you think about it, it’s sort of convicting the person in the media before they are judged guilty by a jury of their peers. It’s an ethical situation. How much journalistic value is in such pictures, anyways?

In the U.S., police would not be able to “prohibit” the press from shooting photos outright. But they don’t have to advertise perp walks to the media, either.

Writing for High Country News, Geoff McGhee of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University reports that rural community newspapers aren’t seeing the same declines as big metro dailies. “In the United States, some 7,500 community newspapers–papers with under 30,000 in circulation–still hit the streets, front porches, and mailboxes at least once a week. A 2010 survey conducted by the University of Missouri, Columbia for the National Newspaper Association produced some enviable statistics: More than three-quarters of respondents said they read most or all of a local newspaper every week. And in news to warm the heart of any publisher, a full 94 percent said that they paid for their papers.” The reason? Internet competition has not invaded rural communities as much as urban areas, the article says.